It’s 7:30 a.m. on a cold winter morning in downtown Stockholm and a sea of Swedish nationals are flooding Central Station to catch a train to work. Thanks to the busy shops and restaurants and the body heat being generated by the 250,000 commuters, the station is nice and toasty. Well, this heat used to be lost by the time the morning rush hour ended. Now, engineers have learned a way to harness it and transfer it to a newly refurbished office building down the block.

Says Karl Sundholm, a project manager at Jernhusen, a Stockholm real estate company, and one of the creators of this new system:

“They’re cheap and renewable…this is old technology, but used in a new way…It’s just pipes, water and pumps, but we haven’t heard of anyone else using this technology in this way before.”

Here’s how the system works:

The heat generated by the commuters is captured by the station’s ventilation system and used to heat water in underground tanks. The water is then pumped through pipes to the 13-story Kungbrohuset office building, roughly 100 yards away, where it is incorporated into the main heating system. The company expects to lower the energy costs in their office building by as much as 20% per year. And building the new heating system, including installing the necessary pumps and laying the underground pipes, only cost the firm about $30,000.

According to Sundholm:

“It pays for itself very quickly,” he adds. “And for a large building expected to cost several hundred million kronor to build, that’s not that much, especially since it will get 15% to 30% of its heat from the station.”

While drawing on a crumpled napkin during a coffee break two years ago Sundholm and his colleague Klas Johansson stumbled upon the idea:

“[The excess body heat] was previously just let out into the air. We thought we could do something with it,” says Johansson, head of Jernhusen’s environmental division. Both men are optimistic about the possible future uses of the technology: if they can figure out how to harness excess body heat on a mass scale, it could offer a significantly cheaper way to heat homes and reduce carbon emissions. Sundholm says the aim is to one day transfer body heat generated in residential areas at night to office buildings in the morning, and back again in the afternoon. “It could even be our next project.”

Obstacles:

One obstacle for total success is that the buildings need to be close together for the engineering to work:

“It is very hard to move low-temperature heat very far. The buildings would have to be very close together by 100 to 200 yards and they would have had to really do some magnificent engineering to make sure they were not using more energy to pump the hot air over in the train station into the office building,”

Says Lester Lane, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Green Design Initiative. Lane also says:

“countries like the U.S., where energy is not as expensive as it is in Sweden, may not see the same financial benefits after investing in the insulation, pipes and pumps. Also, if people don’t regularly turn up to the train station or other high-density place where the energy is derived from, there won’t be enough body heat to fuel the heating systems”.

Cement production is one of the largest sources of carbon emissions in the United States; coal-fired electricity plants are the biggest source.

“With this technology, coal can be cleaner than solar and wind, because they can only be carbon-neutral,” said Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley billionaire. His venture capital firm, Khosla Ventures, has invested about $50 million in Calera. On Monday, Calera will announce that Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, has invested $15 million.

Calera says that by changing carbon into a building material, it can make carbon reduction economically attractive, especially in places where there are no government subsidies or carbon taxes.

In 2007, Brent Constantz and Mr. Khosla formulated plans for Calera. Though the company declines to share precise details of its process, it says that it combines carbon dioxide with seawater or groundwater brine, which contains calcium, oxygen and magnesium. It gets left with calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate, used for making cement and aggregate.

To make its cement more usable for manufacturers of traditional Portland cement, it is also making concrete blends of 20% Calera cement and 80% Portland cement – the calcium silicate binder used in concrete for buildings, bridges and highways.

This includes renewable energy, greenhouse-gas reduction, energy management, energy storage systems and greening the campus transportation fleet. The university impressively generates 80% of its own electricity.

“The only thing we’re looking at, at the campus, are quantum improvements…It’s not just to install the next incremental step; it’s to put in the next breakthrough. What I’m doing with my colleagues is going to have a global impact…I’m so anxious to put the different pieces of the puzzle together…Learning patience is the only negative part of the job.”
Though born in Maryland, Washom was raised in Hawaii and on the isolated Midway Atoll. His father, a retired naval officer, went into the electric-supply business distributing utility products and his mother worked as an account executive for a newspaper agency.

Living in the middle of the Pacific on a bird and marine sanctuary roughly the size of UC San Diego was for him a firsthand education in sustainability. The 400 residents of the atoll relied on a monthly supply ship, diesel generators and a desalination plant. With only two passenger cars, most people rode on bikes. “Using renewable systems was a way of life…You lived within your means. It was a radically different world.”

Washom, now 60, graduated from Honolulu’s Punahou School in 1967, more than a decade before Barack Obama graduated from the same school. He left for USC just as Hawaii was opening its first freeway. He earned a bachelor’s degree in management and finance (with a minor in oceanography) in 1971, and then an MBA the next year. In 1976, he completed his postgraduate studies in ocean engineering at MIT.

After working on solar energy for Fairchild Stratos Corp., Washom founded Advanco Corp. in 1980. Four years later, Advanco set the world record for the most efficient rate of converting solar energy to electricity, using a technology that NASA later considered using to power the International Space Station.
In 1989, Washom founded the energy and environmental technology consultant firm Spencer Management Associates and served as president for 20 years.

He has also advised the World Bank, the Energy Department and the International Finance Corp.

An avid surfer since childhood, Washom credits this sport for his risk-taking business style:

“That’s when my greatest genius comes out, at the end of the branch of a tree…It’s a culture to me. The element of risk was also combined with the grace and athleticism of surfing a wave, so you were scared and performing at the same time.”

Here’s a way to squeeze a few extra bucks out of Uncle Sam, while being a true blue green machine:

The economic stimulus package passed by Congress last February included a full federal tax credit – that is not just a deduction – on 30% of the cost on all energy saving items. This includes a cap of $1,500 per house, if installed before the end of 2010. Within this new stimulus package consumers have the double benefit of slashing their utility bills while increasing their house’s long-term value. Now keeping it green is a double entendre – haha!

If you don’t really need to upgrade the whole entire house, you may at least benefit from one to two new changes. Qualified products must meet standards established in 2009 by the International Energy Conservation Code.

Here are a few ideas:

-Formaldehyde-free fiberglass batts and cellulose-based spray foam, which fills various nooks and crannies are a couple of ideas.
-Insulation jobs paired with sealing air leaks is a major bang-for-the-buck efficiency measure.
-In Australia, which is suffering a major drought, a company called Caroma has created a Profile toilet with special water conserving features. You can recognize it as the toilet with the faucet on top of the tank. After you flush, water pours out of the faucet and into a recessed drain until it refills the tank.
-A new product from Velux, The Skylight Turn-Key Collector Kit, is also a hot item. It enables you to get hot water for free, from anywhere which you can mount a skylight. The kit comes equipped with an electronically controlled pump, two water collectors encased in the Weather Tight frames and a 60-gallon hot-water storage tank.

Enter the Obama Administration’s new “Carbon Tax” or “Green Energy” tax bill which is supposed to discourage Americans against using excessive amounts of carbon based energy, i.e. energy powered by carbon based fossil fuels, in order to encourage them to begin switching over to alternative and renewable energy sources, such as solar power, hydrogen gas, and other similar fuels.

The main problem in doing this, according to opponents of the bill, which includes virtually all Republican Congressmen and women and Senators (as well as many Democrats) is that Americans are simply not ready to switch to these new fuels – as they simply aren’t available yet. And the costs to American tax payers for increased fuel prices and higher overall taxes is estimated to run to more than $150 billion over the next ten years, or an average of about $3,100 per household.

The new bill is planned in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2050. Energy companies using carbon based fuels will have to obtain a special permit from the U.S. government in order to produce electricity by using carbon based fuels.

Proponents of the new bill, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, claim that the gradual switch over to clean technology and carbon less fuels will create millions of new jobs. There might be some truth in that claim, and it will also mean that the switch over to new energy sources will result in millions of Americans losing their jobs as well. The proposed bill is also said by many to be reminiscent of the Clinton administration’s BTU Energy Bill in 1993 when Democrats passed a bill, advocated by then Vice President Al Gore, that would have taxed the amount of energy used by measuring British Thermal Units, or BTUs in both homes and industries. This would have resulted in taxes on energy used going up considerably, and as a result was defeated by Congress. The new bill is even being called by many opponents as the BTU II Bill.

While there is little doubt that Americana must rely less on fossil fuels, much of which is imported from the Middle East, those opposed to the new bill say that the process must be done gradually, and especially not during an economic crises like the one Americans are currently going through. It will take a long time before most Americans will be traveling about in total electric cars, or ones fueled by hydrogen or by water (which every chemistry student knows is composed of 2 atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen).

Some of the programs planned by the new administration include:

• Putting 1 million hybrid cars on the road by 2015 by offering tax credits of up to $7,000 for the purchase of these cars.
• Encourage the development and production of clean fuels such as hydrogen and electricity.
• Establish a national low carbon fuel standard to reduce emissions that cause greenhouse gasses.
• Offer funding for further development of alternative energy such as solar and wind energy.
• Encourage domestic energy production, including development from unused domestic oil and gas leases.
• Help homes and business to be more climate friendly with improved insulation and other means to make them warmer in winter and cooler in summer.

The environment and energy independence will receive top priority by the Administration, with the main goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2050.

Alternative energy sources, particularly solar and wind energy are already in use in many parts of America as well as in other countries around the globe. Wind energy turbines, made by such companies as the Indian company Suzlon Energy Ltd, and the Danish Vestas Wind Systems Ltd. Already produce thousands of megawatts of clean, emission free electricity. American companies such as General Electric hope to increase their share of the wind turbine energy market; and wind turbine “farms” are already in operation in California, Texas, Illinois, and other states with sufficient wind velocities.

In addition to encouraging the development of alternative energy sources, greater efforts will be made to make available energy sources such as coal and oil shale much cleaner and economic to use. It is estimated that there is enough domestic coal and oil shale to provide America’s energy needs for years to come. The big question is how to make these fuels environmentally friendly, especially in regards to global warming.

It is apparent that the new Administration will devote much attention to environmental and energy conservation projects, which will not only create badly needed jobs but will help to protect our planet’s environment as well.